And after a debate on the effects of the Government’s Housing and Planning Bill, Cllr Davies gained the support of the whole council in his efforts to oppose it.

He called for an analysis of the impact of the bill, a strategy for mitigating its effect and an urgent meeting with the two Reading MPs to raise the council’s concerns with the Government.

Cllr Davies was speaking at the full council meeting on Tuesday, January 26, and began by attacking the starter homes plan in the bill which he said would mean houses costing £1/4 million in Reading would be subject to a 20 per cent discount for those few who could afford a £50,000 deposit.

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He said in five years they would be able to sell up and “walk away, thank you, with a tax free windfall of up to £62,500 here in Reading”.

Cllr Davies said the bill robbed the council of the ability to require developers to build genuinely affordable housing.

Green Cllr Jamie Whitham said the bill “was another nail in the coffin of social housing” and “it was the young who will be suffering the most”.

Conservative Cllr Simon Robinson said his group shared some of the concerns but said "drastic times called for drastic measures".

He went on: “We have a situation where first-time buyers even if they do have a reasonable income are finding it so difficult to get on the housing ladder because of the need to find ever-increasing sums for deposits and this is not acceptable.”

But he defended the Government’s record in building double the number of new affordable homes in five years compared with the Labour Government in 13 years.

£1/4 million

Lib Dem Cllr Meri O’Connell said: “£1/4 million is not most people’s idea of a reasonable price for their first home.”

She accused the Government of closing the door “on truly affordable housing for low-income families”.

Cllr Rachel Eden pointed out it was not just young first-time buyers who were hit by the affects of the bill - elderly “last-time buyers” and and disabled people were also affected.

Cllr Chris Maskell said there were companies which had been set up to advise developers on how to avoid having to include affordable homes in their developments.

He described the bill as “a charter for profiteering among all the other things and it’s at the expense of the poor”.

The council unanimously backed Cllr Davies’s motion which welcomed some measures in the bill in getting to grips “with rogue landlords” but he said it “does not help with the high rents, poor conditions and insecurity affecting many of England’s 11 million private renters - including one in four families with children - and does nothing to help arrest the recent rise in homelessness.”